Fellow travellers

There are many agencies whose work contributes to the growing recognition of the need to tackle underlying psychological and emotional issues, in tackling homelessness. In the UK:

The Department of Health has taken the lead in recognising the nature of personality disorder, and promoting new ways of working with the most marginalised, where the greatest health inequalities are to be found.

The Dept of Communities and Local Government has taken a lead in framing homelessness as a question of social inclusion, and encouraging greater recognition of the work of homelessness services in tackling these issues.

The Cabinet Office has taken a lead in recognising the failings of silo working, and the need for greater service integration.

Across Europe, and a multiplicity of national administrations ans cultures, FEANTSA provides a meeting ground between diverse services and policy frameworks; whilst in the US, various client-group specific agencies span the equally various states. We would particularly like to mention the work of:

* For a comment on the development of PIE thinking in Europe from papers in the PIELink Library, see the Europe page of the old PIELink site.

Partnership in practice

Here we want some general statement on partnership, complex needs and skills mix - and how this must also extend to research. So:

draft text for a possible video:

There is partnership work needed at all levels here: from the development of this site itself, and the wider project on which we are engaged; across to policy and research, both national and international; through greater inter-agency work at local level; to services and teams; and finally, in the work we can do with homeless people themselves, which we need to see as partnership.

At all these levels, we also need to see collaborative work between front line services and the research community, to ensure that in future, the evidence base, on which policy might then be based, is informed by the creativity and questionning of needs-led services. Here too we need a dialogue between nations, to ensure that the evidence we use is not just grabbed, context free, but is fully aware of all the complex circumstances and partnerships that go to meeting complex and entrenched needs.

Our sponsors

The PIELink NET, as a budding on-line community of practice, has been developed with the generous support and sponsorship of a number of agencies. We should like to thank in particular: